Ohio State’s faith in Malik Hooker is about to pay off

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Nobody knows exactly when Malik Hooker will transform into a superstar at Ohio State, but most seem to agree that it’s a question of when and not if.

It could be as early as this fall given his status as a frontrunner alongside Damon Webb in the battle to fill the two vacant starting spots at safety. It could also take longer, which wouldn’t be a surprise given the path his life has taken. If and when it does happen, however, it will turn his recruitment and subsequent development into one of Ohio State’s most successful calculated risks, serving as a blueprint for high-upside recruits and the schools that believe in them.

Here’s how it unfolded.

It’s 2012 and Joe Cowart is the new head football coach at New Castle (Pa.) High School, where he also teaches math. He’s seen Hooker roaming the halls and has made it his mission to get him on the gridiron, only to learn that Hooker’s heart – and prodigious athleticism – belong to basketball, where he’d once produced a rim-rattling dunk that landed him on ESPN’s SportsCenter.

“There’s not a lot of guys that walk around a high school and look the way he looked, especially as a sophomore in high school,” Cowart said. “He was a 6-1, 180-pound athlete.”

He has Hooker in a class, so he asks him to try football. And asks again. And again. One day, the answer is yes. New Castle’s first game is against Monaca (Pa.) Central Valley, home of Alabama wide receiver commit Robert Foster. Central Valley defeats the Red Hurricanes 31-7, but Cowart said there were large stretches where Hooker was the best player on the field in his first high school football game.

It’s August 2013 and despite having played fewer than 10 games, Hooker is a rising senior who has more scholarship offers than he knows what to do with. One of those is from Ohio State, but in-state programs Penn State and Pitt are also in the hunt along with Michigan and Nebraska.

Some of that is surely because of the snowball effect in recruiting – one school’s offer causes another program to take notice – but it’s shocking nonetheless.

“I was surprised by the entirety of the process, especially how quick it happened,” Cowart said. “But the gentlemen who work at Ohio State and at other colleges work so hard because that’s their business. Ohio State wasn’t alone in projecting Malik to be a high-level talent at the next level. All these schools were seeing the same thing and – not for nothing – they were piggybacking off each other. All these Power Five conference teams are looking at him and saying, ‘Yeah, he can play for us.’ It was still surprising that he had nine total football games under his belt and walked into his senior season with 30-something scholarship offers. That’s probably a unique scenario, I would say.”

It’s February 2014 and Hooker’s fax has arrived at Ohio State on National Signing Day. It only took two years of high school football for him to secure his place in the No. 3 recruiting class in 2014, and it’s a perfect marriage. Located three hours from home, Ohio State offers prestige and has a talented enough roster to wait for Hooker to mold his raw athleticism into refined technique.

In his opening statement at his National Signing Day press conference, Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer rattles off three of the team’s defensive back signees – Marshon Lattimore, Erick Smith and Damon Webb – and says all three should be in the two-deep as true freshmen. He pauses for a second before mentioning the fourth and final defensive back.

“Malik Hooker is a guy who only played two years of football,” he said. “I watched him play basketball and he certainly has the athleticism and size. It’s just experience. So he might take a little bit longer, but that’s an area obviously that we need to improve.”

It’s January 2015 and, sure enough, Hooker hasn’t played a down for the Big Ten champions. But he’s in New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl and then in Dallas for the College Football Playoff National Championship and, suddenly, he can see the path to greatness through his teammates, guys like Tyvis Powell and Eli Apple, both of whom redshirted before starting on a national championship team.

“His freshman year when those guys won the national championship, he traveled to the semifinal and championship game,” Cowart said. “Whatever hang up he may have had about wishing he wasn’t redshirting or wishing he was in the mix – stuff all redshirt guys go through – that all went away when he saw and tasted the success those guys were having. And then he worked hard and put himself in the mix and got a taste of what it’s really like to be part of a program.”

It’s August 2015 and Hooker is in the middle of his second fall camp. He’s not going to start. Returning starters Vonn Bell and Powell occupy both starting spots, and Smith is also pushing for playing time.

Still, he’s bought in and recognizes special teams as the path to playing time at Ohio State. The athleticism that allows him to pull off 360-degree windmill dunks is showing up in the defensive secondary.

“Malik Hooker has done a nice job, he really has compared to where he was a year ago as a freshman,” safeties coach Chris Ash said. “He didn’t even know how to tie his shoes. He is out there making calls, he is out there playing hard. Last Saturday, we had a really nice scrimmage. He had an interception, he had a bunch of tackles, a PBU [pass break up]. Tonight, he has a couple interceptions in practice. So it’s starting to slow down for him and he is starting to play really fast.”

It’s December 2015 and Ohio State is headed to the Fiesta Bowl. Although they’ve yet to announce it, Bell and Powell are off to the NFL. Their presence has relegated him to special teams duty in games, where he’s made 10 tackles.

There is one area where he can shine, though. With no championship to play for, bowl practices are the domain of the younger players and Hooker is making his presence known on a daily basis.

“Malik is my guy,” Bell said. “I think he’s going to be all right, he really is. He’s got an instinct for the ball, makes plays, gets a lot of interceptions in practice. I’m telling you, he’s probably leading the team in interceptions in practice. He can hit you now, too.”

It’s April 2016, and Ohio State’s spring game has arrived. Hooker has a chance to put a bow on a successful spring practice that impressed new safeties coach Greg Schiano. Playing against starting quarterback J.T. Barrett, Hooker picks off two passes and runs one of them back 82 yards for a touchdown.

In part because of his defensive prowess, Hooker’s Gray team beats the Scarlet team 28-17, and avoids the Buckeye Grove landscaping duty that comes with losing the spring game.

It’s August 2016 and Hooker is starting his fifth season of football since Cowart convinced him to give it a shot. He and Webb are the two leaders in the position battle at safety, and Hooker appears to have a stranglehold on his spot in the lineup.

After two years of high school football, a redshirt year and a year of special teams duty, Hooker is not only favored to start for one of the best programs in the country but is also expected to make big plays when he’s out there. It’s essentially the best-case scenario of how his recruitment and personal development could have played out from the moment he decided that football was going to be his path.

“This is the way it should project, but nine out of 10 guys never make it to this point because they don’t have the patience to sit there and learn the craft and get better and exploit those rare gifts that Malik has,” Cowart said.

Hooker has physical gifts that allowed him to jump out of the gym and now help him sky for interceptions that don’t seem possible, but that’s not why he’s in this position. If everything aligns and his stardom materializes, it will be because of his hard work, patience and faith he placed in a program that took a chance on him because it saw what he could become and could afford to let him arrive on his own schedule.

“I knew eventually it would all work out,” Hooker said. “When you first come in, you’re not making as many plays as other people and you start second-guessing. That’s just the mindset. Once I saw my body start changing from lifting and stuff like that, I was like, ‘OK, they sent this many people to the NFL so I’m sure they know what they’re doing.’ I just put my craft and my skill set into their hands, and they molded me to be the player that I am today.”